story and sentiment,
or, conversations with a man of taste and imagination.
no. 1.
‘his thoughts were not the thoughts of other men.’
in the spring of 18—, in consequence of ill health i betook me to one of those lovely vallies on the connecticut, where the traveler if he has taste enough to look about him, may find grouped within the circuit of half a mile, one of the loveliest villages in the world. its clear warm airs gently tempered by the winds of the ocean—the freshness and verdure of the landscape sloping gradually backward from the water side—the high hills which surround it, still covered with dark and rolling forests, as when first the white man took possession of them—and the thousand other natural beauties which are ever found in quiet new england villages, made me bless the fate which carried me thither, and the hour i made it my home.
my first want was a companion. from my boyhood, the book of nature was familiar. i had loved to ramble by woods and streams—gather flowers on meadow and hillside—and, with some favorite book, something to pleasure me, while away the mornings in many a gay bewilderment of fancy. but from the peculiarity of my disease, the bliss of solitary thought was denied me; while my natural bent which was quiet and meditative, it was thought might be indulged in to a degree, if shared with some gentle and kindred spirit. this lack was supplied me. i had been accustomed to observe in my rambles a pale thoughtful looking man, whose peculiarly fine countenance made me wish his acquaintance. this was brought about in some ordinary way, and would little interest the reader—so i pass it at once; but the result of that acquaintance, the knowledge i gained from it, the pleasure i derived from his friendship, are things to be forgotten by me never; and it is with reminiscences of my intercourse with this individual, that i intend to supply myself with subject matter for these occasional papers. so much was i delighted with him, that the first morning of our acquaintance i committed to paper the results of our conversation; so i have but little to do, save copying as from a register, such passages as i deem will be entertaining—which thing i hope to do in an unostentatious manner, at the same time throwing in such reflections as i think apposite, and rambling backwards and forwards as suits the mood of my mind. if i please, my time is well spent.
20 i must first give you a description of him, gentle reader, and the place in which i found him, even if it take up my whole sheet. conceive yourself then on a little eminence about fifty yards removed from the water side, the ground sloping gradually to the stream; and conceive a small, low-roof’d farm house upon it with its windows facing the east, and its white roof partly covered and quite shaded by a clump of tall beech trees; and after you have looked at the creeper, and wild rose, and honeysuckles that grow in profusion about the door, you may stand and listen to the sound of the clearest, sweetest, sparkling little rivulet, that ever gushed from its native bed, to go and mix its sweet waters with the weltering waves of the ocean.
you may now stand with your back towards the farm-house, and look down before you. the broad connecticut sweeps majestically by, its clear surface crinkled only by the sportings of some wanton fish as it darts through it, dashing a shower of pearls into the sunbeams; or perchance the form of a water fowl as it skims unwarily over it, gently catching the liquid on its pinions to scatter it off again with the next evolution. the soft piles of white clouds that sleep in the upper heaven, are as moveless below you; and as the startled dor-hawk sweeps out from the wood behind, and wends his course across to the distant mountains, you may watch his small form on the water growing fainter and fainter, till it becomes a speck and fades from the vision.
now enter with me the dwelling. is it not a scholar’s dwelling? that finely stocked library, with its newly-dusted curtain of green cotton-stuff—that row of antique busts over the mantel-piece—that engraving of the fiery byron—that fine one of scott—and that pleasing one of the gentle and melancholy cowper—say, do you like it? a table stands in the middle of the room, and on it are books of a dozen languages—some thumbed and turned down as if they had seen good service, and others uncut as fresh from the book-seller’s. here’s the antiquarian homer. there’s the mellifluous anachreon. this is the shrewd horace—and there’s the philosophic seneca. how worn they all are! no common one surely is the spirit of this place—but you shall see him.
he sits by the table, writing. there’s a forehead for you, shaded with fine dark hair—there’s an eye, deep, crystaline, full—there’s a cheek, delicate, perhaps too delicate—and above a prominent chin, there’s the pale thin lip of the scholar. his countenance is gentle, but there’s something of severity about the small closed mouth, and in the glitter of that eye—and yet all is calm, all is serenity, all is gentleness. no dark passions have had commission to mark that noble forehead—no feverish and fiery ambition have dared to light their hectic taper on that cheek—all is natural. and his voice—that is gentle too—woman would not wish softer. and now he smiles—how gentle! there’s so much of peace in it, you feel its gentleness.
21 such was my friend. alas! that he is not—that i have but the poor satisfaction of poring over these few, brief-sketched passages of his history.
his first love.
i found him one evening sad and solitary, seated by an open window with a book in his hand, and gazing out into the moonlight. i addressed him, but he answered me not. i took his hand and pressed it—he turned to me, and to my surprise, his eyes were filled with tears.
i did not offer him my pity—his feelings were too holy. i let him weep.
‘my friend,’ said he, after a pause, ‘you are welcome.’
i ventured to ask if any thing had disturbed him.
‘there are moments,’ replied he, ‘in the life of every man, when, whether he will or no, the simplest circumstance, such as a note of music, a word, or a moonlight evening like this, will by the subtle law of association call up a train of dead memories, and pour them in a flood tide on the heart; and as these are pleasant or melancholy, will his feelings take their coloring. here is a little book of sir humphry davy’s, and it has set me weeping; for as i have followed him through one and another of his foolish though beautiful theories, it has called up passages of my life i would fain forget. they are sweet though—
‘pleasant are the memories of days in the shades of morven’—
and i know not but i thank the philosopher though he makes me womanish.’
my companion’s history was unknown to me—i had once or twice wished to ask him—here was a chance. i delicately hinted as much.
‘you ask to your hurt i fear, my young friend,’ said he. ‘little in my life can interest another. it has seen little action. feeling—strong, continuous, deep feeling with small variation, is all it boasts; and pleasant as it is to me, it may little please you.’
i was importunate.
‘i had a lovely cousin,’ began he, ‘a very lovely creature, and one for whom i felt all that ardor of attachment, for the description and stories of which, poets and novelists have been so much laughed at. i shall not describe her to you. the graces of her mind only shall i acquaint you with, and through them you must see her countenance. her parents were dead; and, taken into our house as one of the family, our love went far back beyond our memories, even into childhood, where if we love, it is by some subtle affinity which unconsciously draws kindred spirits together—since at that age we seldom think to dwell upon individual excellences of character. our love as we knew not when it began, so we knew not its force; yet it was pure, deep, spiritual, and dreaming—that passion which22 instead of being modified, modifies—instead of becoming assimilated, assimilates—belonging not to the other power, but making those powers its own. hence our characters were alike. this unity softened down every unhappy prepossession; and the result was, that our loves were like two streams, which though they gush not from the same source, soon after mingle and go quietly on together.
‘from what i have said, you will readily perceive we were dreamers. my cousin was a dreamer—you would know it from the deep, full, swimming eye, without any body’s telling it you; and we were wont to go of a summer’s evening to the church yard, and seated on her mother’s grave, drink in from the silence, and darkness, and solitude of the scene, that witchery and madness which dreamers so much love. from such habits it will easily be seen, that our characters must soon be sobered over with the sad shapings of melancholy. such habits cultivate this mood; and persisted in, the sensibilities if naturally exquisite, become so much the more so that they soon unfit us for every thing else, and win us from the laughter-making and foolish.
‘we were seated one evening as i have mentioned, and our thoughts very naturally turned upon spirits, their intercourse, and the laws which govern them, and the conversation took such a tone as fastened it forever in my memory.
‘i sometimes think,’ said she, clinging tenderly to me, and clasping my hand firmly in both of hers—‘that when we are free from this world, and disenthralled, are ushered into a new existence, we shall lose our identity, and have to find out new sympathies and sources of enjoyment; and the thought saddens me.’
‘why saddens you?’
‘o! i would not forget this world. i would not forget its beauties—its rocks, woodlands, wilds,
‘its human and its natural beauties all.’—
i would not forget them. they must be a source of felicity ever—ever pleasant to be remembered—ever spots to which memory shall turn her saddened eye, when the heart is sick with its melancholies.’
‘fanny, think you the blessed weep?’
‘o! i know not—‘but i could not bear to forget this beautiful world, and those i love in it.’
‘think you’—said i—‘that he who made the spirit and knows its capacities, will not find for it something more substantial than earth proffers us? you know the aged tell us, there’s no bliss here; and we see the young, and gay, and beautiful, fall around us like leaves in autumn-time. what matters it then if we take other minds, as distinct as our own bodies?’
‘arthur! arthur!—you pain me. would you not know me hereafter?’
23 ‘doubt it not—we shall know each other.’
‘i would think so.’
‘from god’s benevolence we cannot prove it; for as benevolence leads to giving the highest good, it may lead him to give us faculties above those we now possess, and felicities in comparison with which all that we have here shall instantly be forgotten. but it is seen from our natures. our faculties, in their aspirations for something higher, by those very aspirations evidence faculties, which earth puts not in requisition. few are the thinking minds who have not sometimes in the calm of the evening, as they have sent their gaze away into the heavens, and watched the stars come out to join the mighty sisterhood of planets and rolling worlds, felt a thirst and a lifting up within them as the pulsations of immortality. this is immortality. the world (not to speak poetically,) is forgotten. i myself have been so far enrapt in this mystery, that i have as completely lost my mortal consciousness as if i had never possessed any; at the same time i have been partly conscious of the same powers as those i use when admiring things around me. i was translated to another sphere—worlds of light were rolling around me—i myself was a source of light and magnificence, rolling on forever
‘still quiring to the young eyed cherubim!’
a state of purity was there. i admired it—but it was the same as my love of virtue here, though incomparably higher; and i was conscious of the same though more elevated communion, as the music of the spheres
‘harping along their viewless boundaries,’
came floating about me. and these things prove that the same faculties go with us from earth, though their reachings and exercises may be as much nobler, as time is less than eternity.’
‘my sweet cousin was re-assured—and we soon betook us home.
‘this evening,’ continued he, ‘its stillness, its soft moonlight, and this foolish little treasure of a book in my hand, have recalled that evening, and that conversation—they have set me weeping. ’tis seldom i speak of the past, but your importunity stands apology.’
i quickly and firmly assured him, that so far from seeking apology, my interest was unaccountable; and i begged the sequel in relation to his cousin.
‘ask it not—ask it not’—said he, with deep solemnity.
he spake no farther.
such was a single evening’s intercourse with this mysterious being. more i learned from him—which in good time the reader shall have from me. till then, adieu.
